Your 2020 Giants: Revised Top Prospect Timetable Thoughts

Obviously, with the MLB season unlikely to begin until June or July, that throws all my prospect timetables out of whack, since they won't be playing, something I should have realized when I posted them (honestly, as you can tell by the length of each, I just wanted to get them out).  I probably should have thought about that before publishing, realizing that things have been moving so fast on Coronavirus Time.

So I thought I would take a stab at initial thoughts on how the top prospects might be affected, based on the current thinking that the MLB won't start until mid-year.  CDC guidelines is restricting meetings of 50+ for the next 8 weeks, which lasts to mid-May, but even if that works and people can somehow start to congregate again, the players will need spring training again, which pushes the start to, at best, early June; and some GM's are thinking July, because many players come into spring training having already gotten ready, but with this order, nobody is staying in shape.  Plus, some counties, like in the SF Bay Area, has a shelter order in effect, restricting people to stay at home for the three weeks, except for essential business (of which, entertainment is not).  Who knows how long that will take?  Still, thought I would tackle the scenario where the season starts up around June/July.

ogc thoughts

It will be very interesting to see how Zaidi handles promotions for prospects in light of the lost playing time.

One would think that he would treat it as if he was in a regular season, and if the prospects forces his way up, he would bring the prospect up.  But with a truncated season, will he be more inclined to go for it and bring up the prospect to get more competitive, or less inclined, thinking, "why bring up prospects", as there are no clear rules for service time right now, what if they get more service time even though they don't play a lot of games (i.e. if proportions of seasons is used, and not the usual service time rostering), to promote prospects.

Still, here are my thoughts on what affects this delayed start would have on the Giants top prospects And it really screws up all the lesser prospects who needs more experience and exposure, as most of them are considered organizational players, unless they can figure things out.

Joey Bart

Bart should have made the majors this season.  Easily, barring injury (he got injured TWICE last season, both HBP).  But if the season is cut in half, he's probably not going to be ready until August or September, at which point, probably better to let him finish AAA, then put him in AFL again, to get more AB, then plan on him sometime in 2021.

It will be interesting to see if Zaidi holds him back to late May 2021 (assuming things are back to normal by then) to control him another season, or do like Sabean and bring him up when he's ready, whenever that may be.

Heliot Ramos

Same more so with Ramos.  There was a good chance he could have hit his way into the majors this season, but he's probably just in AA and AAA this season, then probably start 2021 in AAA before reaching majors at some point.   He could have been achieved his goal of reaching the majors in 3 seasons, had he pushed his way up this season.

He would have to crush with mid-.800+ OPS to reach the majors in 2020, and I would not bet against that.  In 2018, 16 of the top 22 in OPS (.857 and higher) made the majors in 2018 or 2019.  In 2017, 26 of the top 29 in OPS (.832 and higher) made the majors 2017-2019.

Marco Luciano

Luciano's timetable might not be affected too much.  Unless he's hitting over 1.000 OPS (maybe even as low as .900) from the get go and so on, he was likely to spend the full season in Augusta, so that he gets a full season in one place, which is the Giants' usual way of handling teenage prospects.  And unless he's totally clueless in Augusta, he'll get promoted to San Jose in 2021, just as expected.  So he should not be affected much by the delay of the season, unless he's crushing the ball and rising fast up the minors.

Hunter Bishop

Hunter Bishop might not be affected much either.  He should have started in San Jose and would have been promoted to AA if he's hitting well.  The shortened season would limit his playing time in AA in 2020, and perhaps force him to start 2021 in AA, but if he's hitting, and the 2021 season is played in full (we don't know anything yet), he'll probably make the majors around when he would have if there was no delay.

The Giants philosophy has been that AA is the place where their top prospects face tougher competition, as the best pitchers spend more time in AA, but once they prove themselves in AAA, get promoted quickly.  Plus, the way AAA is being treated under Zaidi, that's where he stashes interesting prospects who he can bring up to the majors when there is a need.  Of course, further development is nice in AAA, but many there are just waiting for their chance in the majors.

Seth Corry

I think Corry probably won't be affected much either.  Either he's what he was in his last 15 starts, when he was stellar, or he's not.

If he's stellar, he's going to fly up the minors pretty quickly, short season or not.  Sabean did that with pitchers before, having them climb from the low minors to the majors, within a year of such great stats.  And Zaidi has a reputation of being even more aggressive.  So unless the season is essentially cancelled or limited to an exhibition type schedule where there's no standings, he'll reach the majors still this season if he's this good.

If he's not as good, then I think the Giants will make him earn each promotion.  Meaning, the better you are, the more you are an outlier, the smaller sample size they will accept before promoting you, but if you are simply okay or good but not great, then they'll want a larger sample size, like a season, as proof you can handle the level, before promoting you. 

I just believe the skies the limit for Corry, based on what he did at the end of 2019.  But he has to be able to repeat that to reach that.  We'll see.

Logan Webb

I think the shortened season helps Webb's chances greatly.  The Giants were faced with controlling his innings because he hasn't thrown more than 104.2 IP (and that was in 2018; he was suspended in mid-2019) in his career, and at 22 YO, he's in the injury nexus period.  Not sure how Zaidi feels about this, but the Giants have not been against having the pitcher jump more than 25 IP from season to season, which is the guidance I've seen for pushing young pitchers innings pitched.

But now, with a shortened season, and Beede on the IL for TJS, he just needs to pitch like he was in 2019 in the majors, and he should win the 5th SP spot in the rotation, instead of being put in AAA to start the season, so that he's pitching as a SP, but his innings would have been controlled and limited.

Barring injuries and horrendous performances, the top four spots are taken:  Cueto, Samardzija, Gausman, Smyly.  Leaving Webb to battle D-Rod, Suarez, Shaun Anderson, Connor Menez, and probably Sean Hjelle, for that last rotation spot.  He's in the position Brian Wilson was in, long ago, a sure thing for the 26-man roster, barring a horrible spring (BWeez had a horrible spring...).

Forgot about Tyler Anderson, he'll be strongly in the mix for the 5th rotation spot as well.  He's recovering from TJS and would have been ready to pitch by mid-season, pre-coronavirus delay.  But with no minor leagues to get ready for the majors, he might need more reps beyond the expected secondary spring training (they'll need to have another, perhaps extended, spring training to prepare for the re-start of the season). 

So I still think Webb has a very good chance to win the 5th spot, but Anderson lurks closely, depends on how long Anderson needs to get ready and on how much the front office needs to see from him before putting him on the 26-man roster (or more, with a truncated season, I've seen talk about expanding the roster for this season, lots of options are on the table right now, may as well experiment this season).

Sean Hjelle

I think the shortened season could help Hjelle, but also hurt him.  He's been good but not great coming up the system, which normally means spending each season at each level, so I would not have been surprised to see him pitch well in AA then get a promotion to AAA mid-season.  Normally, that would get him a trial with September Call-ups, but with the revised rules limiting call-ups, he probably would have been pushed to 2021 for reaching the majors.

But with the shortened season, surprise teams could have a nice run and win a playoff spot.  Some speculate that the season could be around 100 games, and as we all know, the playoff qualifiers at mid-season is often different from those who qualify by season's end.  At 100 games, the Giants were only 2.5 games out from the last wild card spot last season.  I can see the Giants bringing up Hjelle to be a set-up guy (assuming he's having a good season in AA and/or AAA) in order to mess up other teams having to face him and Tyler Rogers, in succession.

But it could go both ways.  He likely would have been promoted at some point this season, with a regular season, but unless they need him, he's probably not going to be promoted until next season. 

But if it were me, as long as he's doing well in the minors, find some way to bring him up in September, even with the new rules, just to see how he affects MLB hitters, even a small sample has to be invaluable in assessing him.

Others

I don't see the young hitters in the lower minors being affected much, like Canario, Wilson, Matos, Toribio, Pomares.  They'll get less experience, but assuming they hit as expected, a half season won't hurt them appreciably, as long as they hit well enough to get promoted to their next level.  If anyone gets off to a slow start, though, that could hurt, if they needed more time to break out of that slump.  I don't expect that, individually for each, but with so many young prospects, someone is going to have a slow start, no doubt.  As the rule of thumb goes, a hitter needs about 2,000 plate appearances to learn to hit well enough to get a chance in the majors.

Same thing with pitchers in the lower minors, probably even more so.  The Giants have historically promoted them aggressively if they show they are handling their level easily, and Zaidi is reportedly more aggressive.  So the main effect might be, say, only reaching AA when with more season to play, he reaches AAA.

For the prospects on the edge, like Jaylin Davis and Chris Shaw, D-Rod and Andrew Suarez, and the rest of the AAAA player crew that Zaidi has collected in Sacramento, it will all probably depend on how the MLB season is going (just as 2019), which would have happened if the season started on time.

• If the team is losing, the team might decide to cycle through some guys through the roster, give them a month to show what they got, like they did with Yastrzemski.  

• If the team is winning, they will keep the guys performing, and cycle out the guys who are not, trying to find lightening in the bottle.  

Sabean Tendencies for Promotion

Relatedly, I found an article about Sabean's tendencies for promoting players to the majors (by Baseball Prospectus).  For hitters from 2005 to 2009, the Giants were right around 2,000 plate appearances:

They were 12th lowest among all MLB teams, so they were relatively aggressive but not excessively.  Right around 2,000 PA, which is the median in the majors, roughly.  The article noted that the Twins were over 200 PA above the next, so it seems the Giants were roughly around 1,950 minor league plate appearances.  Sabean has always said hitters need around 2,000 plate appearances, to figure things out, and he did that in the 2005-2009 period.

For pitchers, they were much more aggressive, which hews with our experience:

The Giants were 3rd fastest in the majors.  Looks like slightly more than 300 IP, maybe around 320 IP.  The median looks about 380-390 IP, much is a lot more.

This was my experience too, for Sabean's era as GM. Pitchers sometimes flew up the minors, like Jonathan Sanchez or Tim Lincecum or Kevin Correa. He hewed to the philosophy of promoting as soon as they proved themselves, it seemed that TINSTAAPP was his guiding principal, even if that was not a thing when he became GM.  Not that every pitcher promoted succeeded, but that rather, they were aggressive once they thought the pitcher had MLB abilities.  I've never heard him quote a timetable for pitchers, so again, he seems to believe TINSTAAPP, either you got it or you don't.

And though there were not as many examples, he was aggressive with hitters too.  Sandoval had slightly more than half of an AA season when he was promoted to the majors, for good.  Posey as well.  Belt and Crawford flew up the system as well, but not without hiccups, where they got sent back down.  Duffy rose quickly as well, and Panik didn't take too long either.  But most hitters took a long time to reach the majors, generally, and they did not succeed to stick in the majors.

Thoughts On Zaidi's Promotion Tendencies

Since Zaidi was with the A's during this period, maybe he leans on his learning there, so here is that data on Oakland:  they were 22nd for hitters, around 2,200 plate appearances, much slower than most MLB teams; they were 6th for pitchers, around 330, still pretty aggressive, but not as much as the Giants.

Since Zaidi worked with Friedman in LA, similarly, I thought I would look at Tampa Bay's data:  they were 8th for hitters, around 1,900 PA, more aggressive than the Giants; they were last in the majors, horribly worse than the Giants or A's.

Based on what the Giants did with Zaidi as GM in 2019, he appears to combine aggressive promotion of hitters like Tampa Bay (though part of that was he was required to do that with Connor Joe, and other waiver wire guys, like Michael Reed et al), with aggressive promotion of pitchers like the Giants (Webb, Menez, bunch of waiver pickups again).  I like the expansion of coaching resources up and down the system, as I've written about over the years, I don't see why the Giants, for pennies on the dollar (when comparing coaches' salaries with improved prospect MLB production), invest in more coaching, as well as training resources for prospects in the minors.

Maybe develop the next Pete Rose, driven to succeed, as I was thinking they could do something like the Royals Baseball Academy, helping develop their prospects better with additional resources available to the players.  Extra pay (so they can devote more time to playing, and not earning a living), extra coaches, extra equipment, so that maybe they can take that next step. 

We'll see if they are outliers or his M.O. with 2020, though obviously acknowledging that his tactics and strategy might be tweaked by the shortened season, as well as the inclusion of Scott Harris as GM.  I assume that Zaidi will continue to look to acquire players he likes in 2019, but now Harris will do the administratrivia parts of the job for him, as well as contribute his knowledge and expertise.

Success in Promotion

Viewed by promotion average production, things are different:

Here, Oakland led the majors with roughly 1.25 average WARP for call-ups in first two seasons, Tampa Bay was third with roughly 1.1 average WARP, and SF was twelfth with a little under 0.7 average WARP (though if this was done in 2012, they would have gotten a huge boost from Posey and Bumgarner, though hurt by Posey's injury in 2011, unless adjusted for a full season or using 2012).  Hopefully Zaidi learned something from Oakland and Tampa Bay connections.

As I noted with research in a prior post, Zaidi has a streak as GM of finding good prospects, where one of them, often a guy he picked up before that season, produces well, I believe at least 1.0 bWAR, that continued with the Giants in Yastrzemski, but ended in LA.

I'll quote this from the BP article, as it notes hitter and pitcher averages for successful prospects (bold is mine):

Interestingly, if we limit our pool to players who amassed a combined minimum of three WARP in their debut and sophomore seasons—essentially, those who were unquestionably “ready” when called upon—we find that the most successful call-ups neither blew through the minors nor took their sweet time climbing the ladder. In fact, they averaged 2055 plate appearances and 387 innings, just slightly lower totals than the overall average. Oakland claimed the most immediately successful players, with seven surpassing the three-WARP threshold

That's roughly what Sabean has been saying over the years about what a hitter has to experience before they are ready, generally.  Never heard anything on pitchers, they were never a time or experience based decision, more of an ability type of decision.  And both numbers are roughly a little more than 3 seasons worth of experience.

Major League Equivalencies

This article is the first one where I've seen a good explanation of Major League Equivalencies (or MLE's):  that is, how much of an indication of the hitters' and pitchers' MLB abilities are being indicated by their production in AAA, as well as AA.  Per the calculations in the article, done for the author by the great Dan Szymborski (who wrote a blog post on MLE), historically MLB Equivalencies is 90% of their AAA performance, and their AAA performance is 90% of their AA performance (or 81% of their AA is their MLE).

Here are some examples from 2019:

• Joey Bart hit .912 in AA, which has a MLE of .739
• Chris Shaw hit .868 in AA, which has a MLE of .703

The caveat here is that the MLB is just an average across all age ranges.  There will be a different translations normally, say, for Bart who was only 22 YO when he hit .912 in AA and for Shaw who was already 25 YO when he hit .868, probably lower than 0.81 for Shaw, since he was 0.9 years older than the average player in AA, and Bart was 2.1 years younger.

So, for a made up example, 0.70-0.75 for Shaw, but .90 for Bart, then Shaw's range would be a meager .607-.651 OPS in the majors, while Bart would be a very healthy .821, especially for a catcher.  Unfortunately, this is just an example to show what could happen, we would need Dan's analysis by age to capture what the MLE by age and level is and get a correct MLE for each.